Author: Mr Catherall

Today, we practised our yoga skills during our PE lesson. We’ve been learning all about yoga this half-term and we’re now getting pretty good! We know that yoga can improve our flexibility and balance but we’re most impressed by how relaxing it can be. Today, we used some poses we’re familiar with to create our own sequences. Then, we performed our routines for another pair who gave us feedback using an observation sheet. Here are some action shots…

This afternoon, we continued to think about ‘Being Me’. In particular, we focussed on body image. After defining what body image is, we discussed how some people (according to some research as much as 50% of young people) have a negative view of their body image.

We learnt that this could be influenced by a range of external factors: the media, our friends, our family, our culture, our religion, our role models, advertisements, the TV and famous people. Then, we created a ‘diamond nine’ of how these things affect us.

Focusing on how the media may affect how we view ourselves, we watched this video and discussed the impact changing the way someone looks could have on others.

We then thought about someone who is special to us and wrote down all the things that make them special. We noticed that hardly any of them were related to the way they looked.

After this, we thought about what makes us special and celebrated how good it is to be us. Finally, we summarised our learning in one sentence:

• Albert: ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like – it matters about your actions.’
• Josh: ‘It’s good to be me.’
• Isaac: ‘It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, just be you!’
• Theo: ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like, we’re all the same.’
• Martha: ‘I’ve realised that it doesn’t matter what we look like. I don’t care what people think – THIS IS ME!’
• Sachpreet: ‘No matter who you are, just be yourself.’
• Grace: ‘I can be myself and I don’t care what other people think – it matters what I think!’
• Kai: ‘Don’t be afraid of who you are!’

Today, we were fortunate to be joined by ‘Meet a Creature‘. During this hands-on workshop, we learnt all about evolution and inheritance (part of the science National Curriculum for Year 5) whilst handling some interesting, rare animals.

We all had the opportunity (which some of us declined) to hold each animal and learnt lots of facts about how it has evolved over time – we learnt other fun facts, too!

Here’s a few images of us holding some of the animals:

(Warning: look away now if you’re scared of snakes, tarantulas, bearded-dragons, geckos, chinchillas or children!)

Last week, we were joined by Dave from D:Side who came in to teach us all about staying safe online. We had a great time learning about how to be safer online and, in general, Y5 were pretty savvy when it came to spotting risks online.

During the course of the session, many things stood out to me that I’d like to share with you as parents:

• 25/30 children in the class claimed to be using social media on a regular basis, using phones, iPads and home PCs (mainly, children are using Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp). The recommended minimum age for these sites is 13.
• Children who use Snapchat admitted that they follow lots of people that they don’t know.
• Similarly, on Snapchat, most children were unaware that Snapchat introduced a new technology called Snapmaps which allows other users to pinpoint your exact location. On the app, you must opt-out of this feature. 
• Most children in the class thought that if you upload a picture online and then delete it, it’s deleted from the internet for good and nobody could ever see it again – this is not the case.
• When faced with a fictional scenario where someone has received four follower requests from complete strangers, only two children in the class said they would not accept any of them. That means 28/30 children were happy to become online friends with someone they did not know. The main reason children were happy to accept the requests were because these people were a similar age or had similar interests – if your child can lie about their age to set up their account, so can others.
• Many children are playing games online against people they don’t know and are striking up conversations with these people over headsets.
• There was a particular quote that stood out which many children agreed with: ‘The more followers you have, the cooler you look!’. Please do all you can to change this perception.

All of the above points apply to adults as well as children – please stress this to your child! It’s important that children are aware of this so that they don’t think they only need to be careful because they’re a child.

On Tuesday, we learnt all about staying safe and being responsible online as part of National Internet Safety Day.

We were joined by a visitor from Splats who helped us create a short play about the evil Meanies and the robots. In the play, the Meanies were making the robots (or the people using the internet) say and do mean things. Eventually, the robots were able to pass on some kindness and defeat the Meanies. This scenario replicated being online and the negative things that could happen when we are using the internet.

In class, we watched a Newsround video about three people and the choices they made online. We discussed the importance of keeping passwords safe, not playing online too much and making sure we know who we are communicating with online.

Ask your child what they learnt during the day.

Here are some questions to consider during your discussion…

• Are they being responsible online?
• How do they know?
• How do you know?
• What should they do if they are ever unsure of something that happens when online?
• When/how often are they online?
• When online, what apps/games are they using? And, how safe are these?

Earlier this half-term, all children in Year 5 and 6 were given a ‘reading journal‘. The idea behind these books was to promote a love of reading and provide children with a way to record their reading journeys (both in school and at home). As we’ve been using them for a few weeks now, we had a look at some of ours in class. Here a few examples of responses by children that may, hopefully, provide some inspiration: